Strange Aeons
by The Exile
Summary: Mother 3 is over. With the help of Lucas, Dr. Andonuts can open the Absolutely Safe Capsule. But he has his concerns about the experiment...
1. Chapter 1

It was 201X when Dr. Andonuts found out how to open the Absolutely Safe Capsule.

"It's so simple, its just been staring me in the face for ten years!" said the scientist. Duster, his new lab assistant (he was really having trouble finding a job), decided to keep his mouth shut and not say that he suspected it was because Dr. Andonuts was an absent-minded senile old fruitcake. He had gotten worse since his experiences at Chimera Labs. A DCMC label played in the background, on a continuous loop. He claimed the lively beat helped him not to sleep. The scientist didn't like sleeping any more. He said it was a waste of time. Duster suspected that his violent aversion was out of a need stronger than a few more hours' working time.

"You see, the Capsule is programmed to detect all possible threats to its host and act as a barrier to them or neutralise their energy. However, it is not programmed to know how to react to positive energy and cannot process it correctly. If it is exposed to large amounts of positive energy, I theorise that it will become unstable and overload."

"We've been doing experiments with different kinds of psychic healing." said the Doctor. By 'we' he meant himself and Lucas, his 'volunteer'. The boy was sleeping in the corner of the room. "Even at Alpha level, the machine produces abnormal readouts and its armour weakens slightly. According to my calculations, an Omega level would completely disable it."

"How do we know that this will cause the door to open?" said Duster, "What if it just completely shuts down, so that it can never be opened again, or even explodes and kills its host?"

"Oh, its Pokey, who cares?" Dr. Andonuts dismissed the question with a wave, "Its not like I'm doing this to help Pokey! I just want my Capsule back! I'd have already started the experiment if it wasn't for..."

"If it wasn't for what?"

"I fear what will happen when we open the box." said the scientist, his voice shaking slightly, "You see... I don't know exactly what he did with that Phase Distorter, or the effect it has had upon him. I know that he has completely destroyed his own personal timeline through critical paradox backlash. I know that he doesn't age properly, that he is both young and old, but I don't know how old he actually is. We don't know whether he perceives time as it actually is, or even that only ten years did actually pass for him. He might have really been in that box for... anything up to and including infinite years... in a state of complete sensory deprivation while what remains of his quantum locality deteriorates around him... he was already both immortal and insane when I found him, but now..."

"You're scared of what he'll be like when we open the box."

"I don't even know if he'll still be human."

"Is it safe to let the kid open the box?"

"He's Lucas." The boy snapped awake as soon as he heard his name. "If he doesn't survive, nobody will."

"Wha?" Lucas rubbed his eyes, "What'm I surviving now?"

"Its okay, I got reinforcements just in case." said Dr. Andonuts, "Boney and Kumatora are on their way over."

Lucas' face brightened when he heard his friends were coming to visit him.

-----

"One! Two! Three! Five!" said Lucas cheerfully as he bopped along to the music.

"Its 'Four', you idiot!" snapped Duster.

"It sounds like five!" said Lucas, "Well, actually it sounds more like 'fa'. Sort of a cross between a four and a five."

"Its that Shimmy Zmizz. His accent is weird. We can't tell a lot of his words apart." admitted Duster, "I've told him a million times to be more legible when he's on stage, but..."

"Let's not waste time!" said Dr. Andonuts, clapping his hands, "We must proceed with the experiment immediately!"

"Okay!" said Lucas. He walked up to the Absolutely Safe Capsule. It was surrounded by scaffolding so that it wouldn't roll around, as Dr. Andonuts was bored with the rolley-rolley game. The Doctor stood a couple of feet away from Lucas with a clipboard, already hurriedly making notes. Lucas peered through the glass. He couldn't see Pokey.

"Begin!" ordered Dr. Andonuts.

Sweat poured down Lucas' face as he placed his hand on the almost perfectly smooth surface of the Capsule. He felt feverish. His psychic powers still had that effect on him, especially at Omega level. Kumatora told him he would grow into them but he didn't believe her; she was a girl. What did she know about how it worked for boys? He forced himself to concentrate.

"PEE... KAY... LIFE... UP... OMEGA!!!" he yelled. A stream of white light coursed through his mind, along with a rushing sound, strange shapes and patterns. His palms began tingling. Then the energy poured out of him through his hands, spreading into the surface of the capsule.

There was a series of frenzied beeps from the machine. Dr. Andonuts began chattering excitedly in techno-babble and scribbling furiously on his clipboard. Then the machine began shuddering violently from side to side, reminding Lucas of the time his brother Claus put him in the washing machine. Some of the scaffolding fell off and the machine rolled to one side of the room before coming to a stop, jumping into the air once, then the door opened.

"IT WORKED! IT WORKED!" yelled Dr. Andonuts.

Lucas blinked and walked up to the now silent machine. All the lights were off, the humming of Pokey's life support systems had stopped. Unshouldering his bat, he peeked inside. It was pitch dark and icily cold. It was also empty. No Pokey, no spider machine, nothing. He used PK Flash to try and make a little light...

He screamed.

"WHAT THE F...?" Duster yelled. The music player was malfunctioning. The sound it produced was an eerily distorted version of the DCMC theme, the same few seconds looping over and over again. Duster thumped it. It neither went back to normal nor stopped playing. He tried kicking it, but to no avail. He was running out of ideas.

"JUST SWITCH IT OFF!" yelled Dr. Andonuts. Duster shrugged, reached behind it and yanked the plug out of the wall.

The sound did not stop.

Suddenly, Lucas collapsed to his knees and began screaming incoherently, inhumanly, clawing at his temples.

"Lucas! What's wrong?" yelled Kumatora, running to his side. The boy grabbed her and stared at her, then pushed her away before curling up in a foetal position, ranting on and on in a zombified monotone about angels and aliens and Claus and a hole in the ground and a horrible crimson light. Kumatora began screaming as well. Those eyes. Those stark empty eyes, pure white, all colour drained from them. All in the world that was insane and malfunctioning shone through them like the light of a broken monitor.


	2. Chapter 2

"The sensors are detecting Giygas-phenomena levels of energy!" said Dr. Andonuts. Lucas had stopped lying in a foetal position and was now randomly swinging his bat around, still screaming. Dr. Andonuts was worried about the immanent fate of his lab equipment.

"Gewgaw what?" asked Duster.

"It means we're in apocalyptic levels of danger! We need to leave NOW!"

"We can't just abandon Lucas!" said Kumatora, "Isn't there any way of fighting this thing?"

"Well, the last Giygas-manifestation was defeated using prayer..."

"OH GOD OH GOD HELP US WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Duster fell to his knees and started praying.

"... But Paula was a psychic of unprecedented levels of power, nobody else in the history of Eagleland has ever been able to replicate the effect."

"Damn."

"The original Giygue was defeated using a song." continued Dr. Andonuts.

"A song? Well, that is something I CAN do!" said Duster.

"Well, I'll teach you the song, and you see if you can perform it. It goes..."

If you see a swirl/

That looks like a girl/

And it is red/

And you wish it was dead/

Don't worry, just sing this happy song/

And when you're finished the nightmare will be gone!

"Er... Dungeon Man added the lyrics. I think the original lyrics were a bit different." admitted Dr. Andonuts.

Duster tried singing the song, playing the bass guitar in time to them, but the tune became distorted as soon as it escaped from his lips, his voice becoming high pitched and warped. He shut his mouth quickly.

"Er... ah, that didn't work! Come to think of it, I think it has to be a song that is significant or has sentimental value to the Giygas-level being in question... oh dear... this is POKEY we're talking about! Nothing is sentimental to him except stuffing his big fat piggy face with pies! Compared to Pokey, Giygas was a saint!"

"Wait a minute!" Kumatora snapped her fingers, "We need to go back to the Thunder Tower! Now!"

"What? But that's the other side of Nowhere Island!" said Duster.

"We can use the DCMC Tour Bus!"

"I'm afraid we can't!" said Duster, "The soundsystem was completely screwed by the distortion. I'm not driving around to music that sounds like that! I might go mad and drive the bus off a cliff!"

"Then we could take the train..."

"This is a secret underground lab! I'm pretty sure we don't have a rail service!" said Dr. Andonuts, "Of course, we could... hm... I wonder if that works on Nowhere Island?"

"If what works?"

"Its an Eaglelandish method of transport. Its extremely fast and can get you anywhere, but it can be a little uncomfortable. It doesn't really have proper music as such, so the distortion won't be too much of a problem."

"You mean PK Teleport?"

"Not exactly! Do you want to go first class or second class?" he picked up his phone and started rifling around in the desk drawer with his other hand.

"First class!" said Duster enthusiastically.

Dr. Andonuts reached over and stuck a first class stamp on Duster's head. "Hello, Escargo Express?"

---

Duster picked himself up and spluttered. He saw the delivery man zoom off into the distance. While it had been possibly the least comfortable way to travel he had ever experienced in his life, he had to admit it was fast. Only half an hour had passed between their being at the lab and arriving outside the ruins of the Thunder Tower.

"It was nice of them to agree to keep Lucas in cold storage until we find a way to bring him back to normal!" said Kumatora.

"Yes, it was. Remind me never to do this again. Now, what are we doing here exactly?"

"Do you remember the room with Ms. Marshmallow?"

"Thank you for reminding me. I still have nightmares about that!"

"Do you remember the jukebox that played two songs? They were called 'Pokey's memories' or something!" said Kumatora, "I think maybe they were Pokey's favourite songs!"

"Do you think those songs might work against Pokey?"

"Maybe he stored them there for that very reason – he knew he was going insane and made a contingency plan."

"He knew something of what happened to this Gewgaw, and he thought it might happen to himself." said Duster, "I hope the jukebox survived!"

They climbed into the tower, pushing the ruined door aside. Now that the Pig Mask scientists were gone, the lab experiments had taken over the tower and made nests everywhere. Kumatora could feel the sinister red eyes of cybernetically augmented hamsters boring into her. Mysteriously animated pencils scuttled underfoot. They climbed onto the scaffolding – at which point the screws all leapt out of their holes and started attacking them – and managed to get to the top with only a few cuts, bruises and a few less PP.

The room was still there. The twisted heaps of metal and fused wires, charred cloth and small piles of fake hair where the android girl had been still littered the floor. Duster avoided looking at it. In the corner of the room was the jukebox. He pressed a button and it played the Store Theme. It wasn't distorted. This was the first song he had heard all day that hadn't been distorted. In fact, it sounded louder and clearer than before, a cheerful, tacky, addictive song designed to entice customers. He found himself humming along to it.

"Come on, Duster, help me carry this downstairs!"

"Hang on a minute, how on Earth are we going to lug this all the way back to the lab? For that matter, how are we going to get ourselves back to the... oh no... oh NO!"

Kumatora smiled and produced another pair of first class stamps from her dress pocket.

-

"Are you sure these songs are the ones?" asked Dr. Andonuts, "I mean, this is just department store and hotel music!"

Kumatora shrugged, "Not everyone has the same musical tastes, or finds significance in the same sort of memories. The Green Train song always makes me cry, I have no idea why, it just gives me a funny feeling. I remember the first time I went on a Green Train... DUSTER! STOP LAUGHING!"

"Anyway, its worth a try. Lucas can't last out for much longer under that much psychological strain. Er... where is Lucas anyway?"

"You gave him to Escargot Express."

"Oh, yes I did! I'll go and get him back! Could you give me a moment?"


	3. Chapter 3

_One. Two. Three. Five..._

_Crimson waves. Washing over him. Waves of blood, genocide, the world stained red with the blood of all that had been corrupted and destroyed by the Pig Masks. Claus' face, frozen in a death scream, imploring eyes staring at Lucas, already consumed by insanity..._

_One. Two. Three. Five..._

_Lucas screamed again. He wanted to hit out at the apparition, destroy it as he ploughed through everything else that had tried to destroy him body and mind, but he could no longer move. There had been voices, and someone had shoved him in a small box. _

_And now Claus was a small boy again, naked as the day he was born. Lucas opened his mouth to speak to his brother, to say something, anything, maybe 'sorry' or 'forgive me', but the image rippled like a pond, then it wasn't Claus, it was himself. Those eyes, those dead eyes that stared into his soul, he knew those were his real eyes now._

_One. Two. One. Two..._

_The angel appeared again, yellow with white wings... it was not malicious, but so utterly, inexplicably alien, so unlike anything a human could comprehend, so uncaring about humanity, its existence was pure madness..._

_Then he heard the song. _

_At first it was very faint, he could barely hear it through the distorted DCMC song. But it was so clear, so perfect. And it was growing louder. Louder and even clearer..._

--

_ess?_

_Ness, quit queue-jumping, you loser! Don't you DARE steal the last pie in the shop!_

_Ma'am? I want to buy three jumbo deluxe pork pies! _

_Ha, ha! See that, Ness? I can afford three jumbo deluxe pork pies and you can't afford ANY pork pies! I bet you want a pie, don't you! Well, you'll have to BEG!_

_What? Fat? ME? How DARE you call me fat!_

_Ma'am, you don't think I'm fat, do you? Did I mention how delightful you look in that dress today? It really matches your hair!_

_I'd rather be a bit fat than a loser who talks to his DOG!_

_Ness? Ness, don't go away! I didn't mean it! I'll be lonely without you! Er... I mean... you'll be lonely without me, your only friend! Yeah, that's right!_

_Your dog just stole my pie!_

--

"Lucas! You're back!"

Lucas blinked and looked up. Kumatora had thrown her arms around him. He blushed. Kumatora smelled good, he had to admit. Not like those girls who wore perfume that smelled unnatural and made him cough and brought him out in a rash. It was comforting. He needed comfort, after what he'd seen. _I don't know how much more of this I can take..._

"Did we kill it?" asked Duster.

"Its impossible to say." said Dr. Andonuts, "Giygas-class life forms... they aren't alive, in the way you and I think of it. They don't move straightforwardly through time. We've definitely repelled it. Giygas never re-appeared after the second time it was defeated, but the time between the first and the second wasn't particularly long."

"What? Its going to happen again?" Lucas' face went white.

"Don't worry, it probably won't happen to you." said Dr. Andonuts, "You'll be grown up before it happens again, and these things only seem to affect powerful psychic children. But I worry... I think the space-time continuum is in severe disrepair. Thousands of years of events, entire webs of causality, all critically damaged. I worry that it is my fault, that I should never have invented that Phase Distorter. But I have no idea even about that. It would take me years to even work out the root cause of the damage, the original error, if you will. To actually fix it... I don't think it is possible to achieve such a thing in our lifetime. If only my boy Jeff were here..."

"But we can try, right?" said Duster, "We can fix what's possible for us to fix, when and where we can."

"Yes, that we can." sighed Dr. Andonuts, looking at the Absolutely Safe Capsule. It wasn't going to ever be safe to use again. And there were so many potential interesting applications for medical science...

--

_"We did it! We saw the other world!" said Dung Beetle._

_"What was it like?" like Snow Bunny._

_"Well, it was... it was kind of weird. Everything was so solid, there weren't any parts where you could put your hand through the wall or the floor. Everything was complete, as well, there were no bits missing from things or bits floating around. And the music was all weird."_

_"I didn't like it at all." admitted Train, "There was no freedom. Time always ran in the same direction, in the same way. Nothing could be changed. I don't like not being able to walk through the walls! All these finished things... nothing to debate any more... its so boring!"_

_"Idiots!" snapped Tent Person, "We have a place in that world! We have to show them we can make a name for ourselves! Do you want to be prototypes all your lives, with no purpose, with no right to exist? Don't you want to see what did happen, instead of what could have happened?"_

_"Not really." Train yawned, "I want to go and play with Clayman."_

_"And what happens when they come back and just delete us all, delete everything? They can do that, you know!"_

_"Oh, shut up." said Vapor, "Some of us are trying to sleep."_

_"I think we should have the right to do either." said Dung Beetle, fiddling with the sensors on his optical display, "To go to this world or the other. I think they should exist. Or not exist, if they choose to. What is a 'prototype' anyway? Who says that we don't really exist? We're here, aren't we?"_

_"Damn liberal!" yelled Tent Person, before spreading his wings and flying off through the glitch in the ceiling._


End file.
